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RPI 2024–25: Come for the Hockey, Stay for the Football

Engineers said:
I would have fired him months ago. The team is never prepared to play particularly the 1st period. They make the same mistakes today as they did in October. This year obviously the schedule was much easier than last year with a bunch of Atlantic teams. Doesn’t matter we still lose 20 games. When we play hockey East teams we lose by 5-7 goals. Dave brings in Gilson,McDermott, Bergmanis which are good veteran players to fix the d core which was absolutely awful last year and it still makes no difference. It’s ridiculous already. How many games have we won at the fieldhouse since last year 4 games? Last year we finished last in ecac a first in program history. Clean house
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Not to nitpick but, no. Twice and back to back. My first year of regular attendance as a pre teen in 65-66 (0-13 ECAC) and the next one in 66-67 (1-14 ECAC). My very first year of occasional attendance in 64-65 was 10th out of 15 (5-8-2 ECAC). The 64-65 season was the first year of the coach who legend has it committed five years to lead the program back from a genocide the administration of that time performed on it. As genocides go, history does repeat itself and those that refuse to learn from it are doomed to repeat it.

They did not fire that coach after the two back to back last place finishes. Instead, they left him alone to finish the last two years of the five year pledge. In those last two years the program not only recovered but in the last one (68-69) got their first playoff berth since 1964 complements of the one year guy who succeeded Harkness.

That coach stepped down after his successful five year commitment. Instead, he returned to his regular part time and full time gigs. Adjunct professor of architecture at guess where and partner of a still existing local architecture firm. In fact, a mutual acquaintance told me fairly recently that he still goes in on a limited basis. Regardless, he never coached again.
 
DrDemento said:
Troyboy - can we find a somewhat different term to use than Malpractice? Every time I see or hear that raises my blood pressure a bit. ;) Besides, that term does not come close to doing justice in describing the situation. As one who has watched or participated in this program for over 60 years, I have never felt this badly about how things have deteriorated. Even in 1965-66 while we were getting destroyed on the ice, we did not lose the feeling that the nightmare would be over shortly and we would be back.
Most important - this is my criticism of the program and the school and the administration. Not for one moment do I blame those boys or ladies on the ice. I never felt for one moment that they were mailing it in. They kept trying even as the Titanic was going down. Both squads deserve our support for giving as much as they had.
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We still have at least one more game to play, so I won't weigh in on the coaching situation until the season is officially over. And neither will the Institute, I suspect.

With the loss to Cornell the other night, we have now lost 20 games for four straight seasons, five of the last six, eight of the last 10, and 12 of the last 20.

We have not won 20 games in the past 13 seasons.

That's a lot of losing. Frankly I'm amazed that 2000 fans still turn out on average. That says a lot about the loyalty of the fans and their support for the skaters who don the Cherry and White.

This has been a pretty consistent fall-off going back 20+ years, with the exceptions of a few seasons here and there, such as 2010-11 and 2019-20 when we appeared a lock for LP and then the season was cancelled. The last 10 years have been brutal, and this is easily the worst two decades in the history of the program.

DrD: thanks for much-needed humor in your post. Agree wholeheartedly that the players are not to blame.
 
vicious said:
We still have at least one more game to play, so I won't weigh in on the coaching situation until the season is officially over. And neither will the Institute, I suspect.

With the loss to Cornell the other night, we have now lost 20 games for four straight seasons, five of the last six, eight of the last 10, and 12 of the last 20.

We have not won 20 games in the past 13 seasons.

That's a lot of losing. Frankly I'm amazed that 2000 fans still turn out on average. That says a lot about the loyalty of the fans and their support for the skaters who don the Cherry and White.

This has been a pretty consistent fall-off going back 20+ years, with the exceptions of a few seasons here and there, such as 2010-11 and 2019-20 when we appeared a lock for LP and then the season was cancelled. The last 10 years have been brutal, and this is easily the worst two decades in the history of the program.

DrD: thanks for much-needed humor in your post. Agree wholeheartedly that the players are not to blame.
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In 12-13 season came in 2nd in ECAC. Good season. 19-20 , we're Nolan and Seth's recruits besides Savory
 
Waite21 said:
It's been my observation that most RPI e-mail addresses consist of the first five letters of the last name, followed by the first letter of the first name, and then @rpi.edu.

Bowersk@rpi.edu might be right. If it doesn't work, I'd suggest trying bowerk@rpi.edu.
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It would indeed be bowerk@rpi.edu unless there has been someone who has the same first five letters of a family name and first initial. In that case, it would be bowerk2@rpi.edu or bowerk3@rpi.edu, etc.
 
I agree with just about everything that has been said about this team and the coaches leading it.
I do not agree with getting rid of the AD. I don't know how much leeway she was given concerning Smith. Now that she has a couple of years in the job, she should have a lot to say about it.
Also, she is the AD of the Institute. Not just the hockey team.
Now to the future of the program. Recruiting and the "portal" has made it even more difficult to get the best players for teams like RPI.
I think that we should change the entire coaching staff. The last two seasons have been hard to watch, and it is mostly because there doesn't appear to be any kind of system.
Players are all over the ice and don't appear to know shat to do once the puck comes to the.
Our goalie situation has been inconsistent at best and our team defense has been worse. That is a reflection on the coaches.
All that said, I only hope that a new coaching staff can make a system that brings out the best in the players they have and doesn't insist on their own system that their players can't deliver.
We still have games left this season, and we have a shot against Harvard, So lets continue to get behind the guys on the ice for at least one more game.
 
engineerhockeyfan said:
I agree with just about everything that has been said about this team and the coaches leading it.
I do not agree with getting rid of the AD. I don't know how much leeway she was given concerning Smith. Now that she has a couple of years in the job, she should have a lot to say about it.
Also, she is the AD of the Institute. Not just the hockey team.
Now to the future of the program. Recruiting and the "portal" has made it even more difficult to get the best players for teams like RPI.
I think that we should change the entire coaching staff. The last two seasons have been hard to watch, and it is mostly because there doesn't appear to be any kind of system.
Players are all over the ice and don't appear to know shat to do once the puck comes to the.
Our goalie situation has been inconsistent at best and our team defense has been worse. That is a reflection on the coaches.
All that said, I only hope that a new coaching staff can make a system that brings out the best in the players they have and doesn't insist on their own system that their players can't deliver.
We still have games left this season, and we have a shot against Harvard, So lets continue to get behind the guys on the ice for at least one more game.
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Well said
 
I am baffled by how they still give up so many goals. The defense on paper should be good, Bergmanis was a highly sought after transfer that came because of the Latvian connection. McDermott was a top pair guy at Colgate and logged a bunch of minutes on good UMass teams. Gilson has been superb. Goffredo and more so Smolinski were highly regarded USHL recruits. What happened to Agnew??? He was on the top pair 3 years ago and now doesn't dress. I don't mean to single out individual players, the ones I have met are awesome kids. But the quality of defense is so far below the sum of the parts at this point and we are going on multiple years of this now
 
CMcGarvey said:
I am baffled by how they still give up so many goals. The defense on paper should be good, Bergmanis was a highly sought after transfer that came because of the Latvian connection. McDermott was a top pair guy at Colgate and logged a bunch of minutes on good UMass teams. Gilson has been superb. Goffredo and more so Smolinski were highly regarded USHL recruits. What happened to Agnew??? He was on the top pair 3 years ago and now doesn't dress. I don't mean to single out individual players, the ones I have met are awesome kids. But the quality of defense is so far below the sum of the parts at this point and we are going on multiple years of this now
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It’s perplexing to say the least.
 
The part I don't understand is that I didn't think during Dave's first few years that they were badly coached. There wasn't a huge amount of talent on the roster but he brought in a few transfers around the better players Seth left and we seemed to be going in the right direction. They were fairly disciplined and even made adjustments between periods (something I never saw from Seth and used to drive me crazy). All of that has gone to hell. The players (and I do give them some blame for this) continually take bad penalties (yes guys, for the 100th time, if you break or knock away an opponent's stick you are going to get a slashing or interference penalty) and our team defense (it's not just the guys on D) leaves passing lanes open and fails to pick up forwards between the circles, on the weak side or as trailers into the zone. Was the earlier structure because of the assistants? Was the guy that went to UVM really running much of the system and training? It's not like they've been successful in HE. Was it that the guys that graduated or transferred (Reilly, Ferner, et al) were just great leaders that weren't replaced? Was it just Owen Savory and even freshman Watson covering for a multitude of sins so they weren't so apparent? I just don't know.
 
rpi82 said:
The part I don't understand is that I didn't think during Dave's first few years that they were badly coached. There wasn't a huge amount of talent on the roster but he brought in a few transfers around the better players Seth left and we seemed to be going in the right direction. They were fairly disciplined and even made adjustments between periods (something I never saw from Seth and used to drive me crazy). All of that has gone to hell. The players (and I do give them some blame for this) continually take bad penalties (yes guys, for the 100th time, if you break or knock away an opponent's stick you are going to get a slashing or interference penalty) and our team defense (it's not just the guys on D) leaves passing lanes open and fails to pick up forwards between the circles, on the weak side or as trailers into the zone. Was the earlier structure because of the assistants? Was the guy that went to UVM really running much of the system and training? It's not like they've been successful in HE. Was it that the guys that graduated or transferred (Reilly, Ferner, et al) were just great leaders that weren't replaced? Was it just Owen Savory and even freshman Watson covering for a multitude of sins so they weren't so apparent? I just don't know.
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This is a pretty astute comment. Even look at the PK. 87% in 21-22, 86% in 19-20. I mean most of the top PK guys were Dave recruits, like Linden, Dubinsky, Johnson, Klee, Ferner, Leppanen, Gornall, and others. After the Linden core left, the entire identity of the team changed. They went chasing skill after the Harvard loss imo (That Harvard team had like 14 draft picks) and lost their identity as a gritty, don't give you an inch style of play
 
CMcGarvey said:
This is a pretty astute comment. Even look at the PK. 87% in 21-22, 86% in 19-20. I mean most of the top PK guys were Dave recruits, like Linden, Dubinsky, Johnson, Klee, Ferner, Leppanen, Gornall, and others. After the Linden core left, the entire identity of the team changed. They went chasing skill after the Harvard loss imo (That Harvard team had like 14 draft picks) and lost their identity as a gritty, don't give you an inch style of play
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Savory covered up a lot of the deficiencies within the system. Haven't been a respectable team since he left.
 
AspyDad said:
Savory covered up a lot of the deficiencies within the system. Haven't been a respectable team since he left.
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Savory was lights out for us. That was a Dan jewell find from his days in the ushl. After that the goalie recruiting has fallen off a cliff.
 
AspyDad said:
Savory covered up a lot of the deficiencies within the system. Haven't been a respectable team since he left.
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Aspy what’s the over under we’re looking at a new coach in the next month or so? You think it’s happening or we running this nightmare back again?
 
CMcGarvey said:
This is a pretty astute comment. Even look at the PK. 87% in 21-22, 86% in 19-20. I mean most of the top PK guys were Dave recruits, like Linden, Dubinsky, Johnson, Klee, Ferner, Leppanen, Gornall, and others. After the Linden core left, the entire identity of the team changed. They went chasing skill after the Harvard loss imo (That Harvard team had like 14 draft picks) and lost their identity as a gritty, don't give you an inch style of play
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We continue to see the effects of the administration's decision about locking us down during Covid. The overreaction seen by our school administration can not be over estimated.
 
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